The retail industry customarily uses self-facing merchandise display trays which are also commonly referred to as auto-facing merchandise displays. An example of such a display tray is seen for example in United States Patent Publication No. 2013/0112634. These trays incorporate a biasing member in the form of pushers, pusher paddles, or pusher bodies to move retail merchandise to the front of a display tray.
The movement of the retail merchandise to the front of the merchandise display tray in turn places the retail merchandise at the front of the retail merchandise shelf since in most situations the tray is mounted on top of the retail merchandise shelf. Use of the self-facing retail merchandise tray with biased pushers is desirable because the use thereof avoids the manual labor once required by store employees who would walk the store and move individual items of retail merchandise from the back of a store shelf to the front of the store shelf. Such activity is commonly referred to as facing the shelves. The front facing of the retail merchandise on the trays and thus, on the shelf upon which the trays rest, allows customers to easily see and select an item of retail merchandise for purchase.
Accordingly, self-facing retail merchandise display trays are critical in reducing labor costs associated with manual facing of retail merchandise displays. Additionally, profitability is increased with retail merchandise at the front of a store shelf because of its increased visibility to the consumer, ease of access, and an overall aesthetically pleasing appearance of a well-organized and well-kept store which in turn ensures repeat as well as new customers.
Traditional trays with self-facing pushers have not proven adequate in auto-facing some types of cylindrical shaped merchandise. For example, cylindrical spray paint cans. Specifically, these cylindrical cans have protruding rings around the bottom of the can. As an intermediate can, that is, a can sandwiched between a preceding can and a succeeding can moves forward to the front of the shelf on the pusher biased tray, its protruding ring slides over the top of the ring of the preceding can and the immediately succeeding can. This type of problem is illustrated in FIG. 11.
When an intermediate can has been pushed into this configuration it rides on the protruding rings of the preceding and succeeding cans. Undesirable problems arise when a consumer selects a front faced can to remove from the display tray. More particularly, as the can that is nearest the front stop of the tray is selected by the consumer and lifted from the retail merchandise channel within the tray, the succeeding can is lifted because its protruding ring is over the top of the protruding ring of the can that is being lifted out of the display. That is, instead of the consumer being able to lift just one can, two cans are lifted. When two cans are lifted from the tray the cans may be moved out of the desired linear array within the retail merchandise channel of the tray such that the self-facing pusher is not able to move freely to bias, that is push, the remaining merchandise to the front of the display. Further, the succeeding can that was not intended to have been lifted by the consumer may fall from the retail display as the selected can is lifted. When this happens, the cans, often times under pressure, as is the case for example with cylindrical spray paint cans, can be damaged during the fall.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a pusher that can bias cylindrical merchandise forward in an auto-facing retail merchandise display so that when a cylindrical can is selected the succeeding can does not fall from the display or become so displaced within the retail merchandise channel that the self-facing biasing is interrupted.
The invention provides such a pusher. These and other advantages of the invention, as well as additional inventive features, will be apparent from the description of the invention provided herein.